30 pages • 1 hour read
Jamaica KincaidAt the Bottom of the River
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1983A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Creature in the Parable
The parable that the narrator recounts about a “small creature” that “lived inside a mount that it made on the ground” is a symbolic representation of how most people—including the narrator’s father—choose to live their lives (70).
The creature attempts to live outside the comforts of its mound and decides to attempt to kill a honeybee, which instead stings it, causing the creature “unbearably delicious” pain (70). As a result, the creature decides to stay around its mound, never venturing far but instead wearing down a path as it treads the same areas over and over again for the rest of its life. Parts of the story are left ambiguous, making the parable applicable to a large majority of humanity. First, the creature is genderless, implying that its characteristics apply to all genders. Additionally, it lives for “a length of time that may be measured to be no less than the blink of an eye, or no more than one hundred millenniums” (71). In other words, as with humanity, it is irrelevant how long it lives; much more important is how it lives its life.
Throughout the parable, the phrase “unbearably delicious” is repeated. This, in turn, is linked to the pain caused by the bee, the act of wearing down the ground, the creature’s memories, and the “unbearably delicious pleasure” of remembering (70-71). Ultimately, this oxymoron allows the creature to live in a way that the narrator describes as “pain and pleasure so equally balanced” (71). This balance symbolizes the human experience in that there are both pleasure and pain in people’s daily lives. The story suggests that, like the creature, humans make decisions that may be dangerous (choosing the bee sting) and that result in both pain and pleasure, as do the memories of this experience.
Kincaid implies that the majority of humanity acts as the creature does—electing to allow pain and memories to haunt them in a way that causes them to retreat into themselves and their daily routines. This choice allows for contentment but also causes people to avoid becoming something bigger or affecting the world around them in a meaningful way.
The River
The titular river symbolizes enlightenment and rebirth for the narrator, ultimately allowing for her change and identity formation at the end of the text. The river opens the story, its size and strength described in an almost metaphysical manner as it flows through the most treacherous terrains and, over time, clears a path for future water to collect and flow, ultimately ending in a pool. This description of the river also eschews traditional punctuation; the first paragraph is one long sentence that unfolds in a way that mimics a river’s flow. In breaking free from traditional narrative structure, the river’s divine nature is established from the very beginning of the story.
In a sense, the river is personified as it is described as “having only a deep ambition to see itself mighty and powerful” (63). This personification gives the river significance in the story, as does the way its description closes: It “awaits the eye, the hand, the foot that shall then give all this a meaning” (63). As the struggles of both the man and the narrator are revealed—their journey to give meaning to life in the face of death—it is made clear that the narrator will create a deeper meaning and purpose for herself and the river, symbolically representing her discovery of her power as a writer.
When the narrator enters the river, she experiences a light that illuminates everything while casting no shadows, a representation of the new knowledge she gains through this experience. She realizes that she ceases to exist in a bodily form and that all of the human attributes that had previously been applied to her—“pain or pleasure, east or west or north or south, or up or down, or past or present or future, or real or not real” (80)—exist no longer. She has seen the truth of the world: In spite of death, her mind and spirit can exist outside of the corporeal world and affect the world. Thus, upon exiting the river and experiencing its “light,” she is reborn with a new understanding of life, death, and purpose.
The Books and Pen
At the end of the text, as the narrator exits the river and enters a room, she sees books, a chair, a table, and a pen. These items symbolize the act of writing and art more broadly. The narrator views these items as “perishable and transient” in their physical form (82), but if used appropriately, they become something permanent, impacting a large part of humanity and its future through writing. In this way, Kincaid uses synecdoche to have the pen stand in for the practice of writing and storytelling more broadly.
Additionally, the narrator acknowledges that she feels “bound up[…] to all that is human endeavor” (82), represented by the books in her room—it is not enough to write alone, but writing connects one to the broader literary world. The narrator’s experiences at the bottom of the river cause her to feel connected to humanity in its entirety, and what she has experienced is relevant and impactful to more than just herself. She must make the decision, then, to use the chair, table, and pen to record her experiences. Her writing will live longer and change the world, just as the books in her home affect her world. Ultimately, these items symbolize the purpose that she finds at the bottom of the river.
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By Jamaica Kincaid
